One of the questions I get the most about the Darwin Awareness Engine is how “awareness” differs from “search.”

How St. Louis's KETC Uses the Darwin Awareness Engine to Promote Community Dialogue and Awareness on Immigration

KETC, the St. Louis Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is using the Darwin Awareness Engine™ to deepen the debate on U.S. immigration.

 In order to gain the most advantage from Darwin, it is important to recognize that beyond its powerful “organic curation”, the content curation performed by the principal user, the “Editor-in-Chief” or “owner” of the Edition is critically important.  This curation serves to improve the understanding for both the Editor as well as other users by creating a “shared context”.

I’m getting really tired of hearing about Information Overload. I think we sometimes make the same mistake here at Darwin in thinking that what the Darwin Awareness Engine (DAE) does is help information workers deal with Overload, when what we do is something subtly, but importantly, different. The DAE organizes bits of data into patterns that help the user understand what’s different about the world. This is competitive awareness.

Marathon Music ENT LLC was formed recently to manage emerging Hip Hop/Rap artists.  Anyone in the talent management business knows how tedious it is to really be aware of what is going on over the Web concerning their artists.  Marathon Music ENT is using the Darwin Awareness Engine service it to determine the Web impact and reach of their artists, discover new commercial opportunities and be made aware of copyright infringements.

We recently sat down with a senior product developer at one of Darwin Ecosystem’s customers. This customer uses Darwin Awareness Engine to leapfrog its competitors. As his company feels that their use of Darwin Awareness Engine is the single most important element of a new competitive advantage, we have avoided including identifying details.

Search and discovery are two very different approaches to information consumption. Search has boomed in the last decade, more than 130 billion searches were conducted during 2010. Information overload is driving a new approach to consuming Web information. Search provides an answer. “Discovery” provides awareness. While still at an early stage a new breed of tools, content discovery engines, is gaining traction to complement search engines.

Content Curation: Avoiding Missed Opportunities

All of us have areas of interest and expertise that we wish to continue developing. We want to know everything that is going on in relation to that topic. More importantly, we want to be sure we are not missing anything important. The need to be aware of what is going on is even more critical for businesses. Relevance is more time sensitive and ends up having an impact on the bottom line. The relationship between information and revenue is not a direct one, but the costs of a missed opportunity or an unanticipated threat can be huge. What differentiates successful professionals is their ability to take action before competitors so as to mitigate a risk or act upon an opportunity.

The volume of information on the Web is overwhelming. With more than 5 billion mobile phones (70% of the world’s population) and 2 billion Internet users, the number of posts is staggering. Everyday 200 million tweets are shared and 70,000 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. And this is only the beginning since Web content now doubles every 2 years. Social media has revolutionized the way information is published and shared. Social media has also become a foundation of information discovery and consumption.